Reflectii

In 2023, Spanish authorities arrested 78 people for offenses related to jihadist terrorism, a 66% uptick compared to the previous year.

The figures, compiled and released by the Ministry of Interior, are the highest recorded in nearly two decades. The rising number of jihadist terror-related arrests represents the continuation of an upward trend that began in 2015, the same year Europe witnessed an unprecedented influx of 1.3 million migrants, the vast majority of whom come from Islamic cultures.

The security concerns of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) encompass a wide range of challenges of unprecedented magnitude. Since its inception in 1949, NATO has been involved in several military operations in Europe. During the Cold War, it maintained a defensive posture in Europe to deter potential aggression from the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact Countries. This effort included the deployment troops, military exercises, and maintaining combat readiness to respond to a potential conflict.

After the Arab Spring, the African left was left demoralized and disorganized. However, a recent book argues that the revolution continues in quotidian life.

Twelve years have passed since the Arab Spring, and both Egypt and Tunisia are facing a stark economic crisis. Both are currently under the mercy of extremely unfavorable structural adjustment programs imposed by the International Monetary Fund, relying heavily on food imports, mired in debt, and facing historical inflation rates with unprecedented hikes in food prices. This dire economic situation is made all the worse by a relentless escalation of authoritarian measures in both countries. The prevailing atmosphere indicates that the counterrevolution has prevailed and that avenues of emancipatory possibility have shrunk almost to the point of extinction.

“Terrorism is when the United States installs a dictatorial regime somewhere,

relying on bayonets and using terror against his own people.”

Former CIA employee F. Agee.

Intervention in the internal affairs of foreign states became one of the primary directions of US foreign policy immediately after the end of the Second World War. The key instrument in achieving these goals is an agency with virtually unlimited powers, established in accordance with the National Security Act of 1947, called the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

In the Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of the World Order, Samuel Huntington discusses the revival of Islamic values within the Islamic world and discusses the social and cultural work of Islamic organizations within the Islamic societies. When defining the revival of Islamic values these organizations adopted to do positive social and cultural welfare work, Huntington uses the word “resurgence” and describes the organizations as “fundamentalist” organizations. Much of what Huntington writes, he, in fact highlights the impactful social and cultural welfare work in Islamic societies these organizations delivered; yet the reader in the West is led to see the values upon which the welfare activities were carried out as “resurgence” and “fundamentalist” activities. The deliberate use of these two terms, “resurgence” and “fundamentalist” are misleading for the reader in the West who, to the present date, may not understand that Islamic societies and their existence is primarily directed in accordance with Islamic values.

Can coercive airpower quell a rebellion? Existing literature on the effects of counterinsurgent
violence focuses predominantly on casualties resulting from attacks on civilians. It thus
overlooks the targeting of civilian infrastructure, which is a frequent phenomenon in war. We fill
this gap by examining the targeting of healthcare as one of the most essential infrastructures in
war and peace time. We argue that attacks on medical facilities are distinct from direct violence
against civilians.

Traditional religious divisions regularly fuel conflicts in the Middle East. When it comes to the division of Muslims into Sunnis and Shiites, then not only the Middle East is divided, but also the Islamic world. The Sunni-Shia divide is very dangerous, as history shows again and again.

Germany’s ignored transnational organized crime risk?

Clan criminality is perceived as a worrying trend in Germany. Law enforcement needs to engage new strategies to successfully combat these structures, an ‘external’ criminal threat within the country and beyond.

The global systemic transition’s impending evolution towards tri-multipolarity could see the US-led West’s Golden Billion, the Sino-Russo Entente, and the de facto Indian-led Global South becoming the most prominent poles in International Relations, below which would be rising powers and regional groups. All actors would balance one another by multi-aligning within and between their respective levels, which might result in stabilizing global affairs much more than the prior unipolar and bi-multipolar orders did.

European lawmakers approved plans on Wednesday to remove the national veto for EU member states in the latest attempted power grab by Brussels to wrestle control away from national governments.

A total of 291 MEPs supported the proposal put forward by the “Verhofstadt Group,” a group of MEPs led by the arch-federalist Guy Verhofstadt to amend the European Union treaties in favor of greater centralization and limiting the sovereignty of member states.